Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

[Jeff Osier-Mixon]

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I am creating a Yocto Project build system. For various reasons, it is a
dual-boot system, win7 & linux (probably mint 12, haven't decided). I have
a primary boot disk with both operating systems and a large secondary disk
to use for build trees etc.

Does the filesystem on the big secondary disk matter? Ideally I would like
to be able to get to the large data disk from both operating systems. That
would necessitate NTFS, as win7 does not speak ext4 reliably, but I don't
want to slow my builds down.

-- 
Jeff Osier-Mixon http://jefro.net/blog
Yocto Project Community Manager @Intel http://yoctoproject.org

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Re: Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

[Joshua Lock]

On 06/01/12 15:53, Jeff Osier-Mixon wrote:
> I am creating a Yocto Project build system. For various reasons, it is a
> dual-boot system, win7 & linux (probably mint 12, haven't decided). I
> have a primary boot disk with both operating systems and a large
> secondary disk to use for build trees etc.
>
> Does the filesystem on the big secondary disk matter? Ideally I would
> like to be able to get to the large data disk from both operating
> systems. That would necessitate NTFS, as win7 does not speak ext4
> reliably, but I don't want to slow my builds down.

Erk! I'm not familiar with NTFS but the thought of this scares me, I 
expect you'd be opening yourself up to a world of hurt as:

a) NTFS isn't a first class citizen of Linux.
b) according to wikipedia NTFS has a 255 character filename limit - I 
don't know for certain this is a problem but I wouldn't be surprised if 
it is.

Will you be storing anything on the disk that isn't build related? If 
you anticipate doing a lot of builds you really want to a) use a 
filesystem that is Linux native and b) tweak the filesystem to reduce 
the number of writes made.

If you just want/need to be able to look at the build system pieces 
under WinOS then you could try:
http://www.ext2fsd.com/

Cheers,
Joshua
-- 
Joshua Lock
         Yocto Project "Johannes factotum"
         Intel Open Source Technology Centre

Re: Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

[Darren Hart]

On 01/06/2012 04:01 PM, Joshua Lock wrote:
> On 06/01/12 15:53, Jeff Osier-Mixon wrote:
>> I am creating a Yocto Project build system. For various reasons, it is a
>> dual-boot system, win7 & linux (probably mint 12, haven't decided). I
>> have a primary boot disk with both operating systems and a large
>> secondary disk to use for build trees etc.
>>
>> Does the filesystem on the big secondary disk matter? Ideally I would

Yes, it matters a great deal. Many of the features we use to ensure data
integrity and accounting slow down performance. I use a separate ext4
RAID 0 array for builds (and only for builds and other data that can be
easily recreated). I mount it without a journal and with noatime. This
significantly reduces the overhead of the filesystem and increases
performance considerably - at the cost of higher risk of data loss in
the event of an unclean shutdown.

>> like to be able to get to the large data disk from both operating
>> systems. That would necessitate NTFS, as win7 does not speak ext4
>> reliably, but I don't want to slow my builds down.

No way. See below for details.

> 
> Erk! I'm not familiar with NTFS but the thought of this scares me, I 
> expect you'd be opening yourself up to a world of hurt as:
> 
> a) NTFS isn't a first class citizen of Linux.
> b) according to wikipedia NTFS has a 255 character filename limit - I 
> don't know for certain this is a problem but I wouldn't be surprised if 
> it is.

In kernel NTFS only has experimental write support, and only to
overwrite existing files without changing their file size.

NTFS-3G provides a userspace filesystem implementation with more
features, but I'd bet my house on the performance being abysmal for builds.

--
Darren

> 
> Will you be storing anything on the disk that isn't build related? If 
> you anticipate doing a lot of builds you really want to a) use a 
> filesystem that is Linux native and b) tweak the filesystem to reduce 
> the number of writes made.
> 
> If you just want/need to be able to look at the build system pieces 
> under WinOS then you could try:
> http://www.ext2fsd.com/
> 
> Cheers,
> Joshua

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center
Yocto Project - Linux Kernel

Re: Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

[autif khan]

You are better off with one of the dual boot OSes in a virtual machine
that a dual boot situation where you are trying to write to NTFS from
linux or trying to work with ext2fs tools from windows.

I do not even know if you can create equivalent of symlinks (used
extensively in yocto) on an NTFS

In theory, it might work, but NTFS was not built for linux, likewise,
ext4 was not meant to be used for windows. It is a bad idea.

You know - unless this happens to be your master's research thesis :-)

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Jeff Osier-Mixon <jefro@jefro.net> wrote:
> I am creating a Yocto Project build system. For various reasons, it is a
> dual-boot system, win7 & linux (probably mint 12, haven't decided). I have a
> primary boot disk with both operating systems and a large secondary disk to
> use for build trees etc.
>
> Does the filesystem on the big secondary disk matter? Ideally I would like
> to be able to get to the large data disk from both operating systems. That
> would necessitate NTFS, as win7 does not speak ext4 reliably, but I don't
> want to slow my builds down.
>
> --
> Jeff Osier-Mixon http://jefro.net/blog
> Yocto Project Community Manager @Intel http://yoctoproject.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> yocto mailing list
> yocto@yoctoproject.org
> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto
>

Re: Does my build disk's filesystem make a difference?

[Jack Mitchell]

On 07/01/12 15:16, autif khan wrote:
> You are better off with one of the dual boot OSes in a virtual machine
> that a dual boot situation where you are trying to write to NTFS from
> linux or trying to work with ext2fs tools from windows.
>
> I do not even know if you can create equivalent of symlinks (used
> extensively in yocto) on an NTFS
>
> In theory, it might work, but NTFS was not built for linux, likewise,
> ext4 was not meant to be used for windows. It is a bad idea.
>
> You know - unless this happens to be your master's research thesis :-)
>
> On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Jeff Osier-Mixon<jefro@jefro.net>  wrote:
>> I am creating a Yocto Project build system. For various reasons, it is a
>> dual-boot system, win7&  linux (probably mint 12, haven't decided). I have a
>> primary boot disk with both operating systems and a large secondary disk to
>> use for build trees etc.
>>
>> Does the filesystem on the big secondary disk matter? Ideally I would like
>> to be able to get to the large data disk from both operating systems. That
>> would necessitate NTFS, as win7 does not speak ext4 reliably, but I don't
>> want to slow my builds down.
>>
>> --
>> Jeff Osier-Mixon http://jefro.net/blog
>> Yocto Project Community Manager @Intel http://yoctoproject.org
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> yocto mailing list
>> yocto@yoctoproject.org
>> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto
>>
> _______________________________________________
> yocto mailing list
> yocto@yoctoproject.org
> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto

I'm no expert in this either but I am unsure how NTFS handles file 
permissions, something else that could horribly break!

If I were you I would do as suggested earlier and run Win7 in a virtual 
machine then use a shared directory/network shares system.

Otherwise, you could format as ext3 and use the 3rd party drivers 
available to Windows for reading. Again though I don't know how 
permissions are handled or anything like that so it may be ok for 
browsing but I wouldn't recommend major changes through it.

Jack.